Rethinking Design and Interiors Human Beings in the Built Environment Shashi Caan Laurence King Publishing Published in 2011 by Laurence King Publishing Ltd 361– 373 City Road London EC1V 1LR Tel +44 (0)20 7841 6900 Fax +44 (0)20 7841 6910 E [email protected] www.laurenceking.com Design copyright © 2011 Laurence King Publishing Limited Text © Shashi Caan Shashi Caan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be repro- duced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 185669 756 9 Designed by Laura Tabet Printed in China Contents 4 Picture credits 5 Author’s acknowledgments 6 Preface by Susan S. Szenasy 8 Introduction 11 The Search for Shelter Shelter’s Human Roots The Lost Origins of Building Reclaiming the Past 35 Being Interior Space and the Second Skin Extensions of Self The Un-Universal Man Design for Basic Human Needs (Measures of Man) Design for Well-Being 81 Inside The Emergence of Prevailing Stereotypes The Psychology Analogy Empirical Knowledge Designing Habitable Space 119 Design Toward a New Design Acknowledging Design’s Complex Nature The Development of Experiential Knowledge Establishing a Protocol for Phenomenological Investigations The Identification of Qualitative Design Factors 167 Epilogue: Out From Within 182 Endnotes 193 Further reading 198 Index PICTURE CREDITS Front cover: Lérida University, Alvaro Siza (photo: ©Fernando Guerra/VIEW) Back cover: Shashi Caan 13–14 Shashi Caan; 16 Nicolas Lescureux, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris, France); 17, 18 top Theodore Prudon; 18 center & bottom Shashi Caan, after N. Schoenauer, 6,000 Years of Housing, W.W. Norton & Co., 2000; 19 top Theodore Prudon; 19 bottom Fewkes, “Cave Dwellings of the Old and New World” in American Anthropologist, 1910; 20 James Orr/New Mexico Tourism Department; 21 Carl Sofus Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, Macmillan & Co., Ltd, 1902; 21 center National Museum and Research Center of Altamira Department of Culture of Spain; 21 bottom Theodore Prudon; 22 Richard Shieldhouse; 23, 25 Carl Sofus Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, Macmillan & Co., Ltd, 1902; 26 top Vitruvius, De Architectura, trans. Cesare Cesariano; 26 bottom On Adam’s House in Paradise, from Viollet-le- Duc’s Dictionnaire 27 Vitruvius, De Architectura, trans. Cesare Cesariano; 28 Marc-Antoine Laugier, Essai sur l’architecture, 1755; 31 AIA Journal, October 1961; 39 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 1751–1772; 41 Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Venice, 1499; 42 Shashi Caan; 46–47 Shashi Caan, after Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension, Anchor Books, 1990; 48 Getty Images/Time & Life Archive, Photographer Bernard Hoffman; 49, 50 Shashi Caan; 51 Shashi Caan, after S. Diamant, “A Prehistoric Figure from Mycenae” published in The Annual of the British School at Athens, Vol. 69 (1974); 52 Shashi Caan; 53 Librado Romero/The New York Times; 56 Robert Fludd, Utrisque Cosmi, 1619; 58 Modulor redrawn by Shashi Caan/©FLC/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2011; 59 Shashi Caan; 61 Albrecht Dürer, Four Books on Human Proportion (Vier Bücher von Menschlicher Proportion), 1512–1523; 62 Shashi Caan; 63 Cover of the English edition of Architect’s Data, Ernst Neufert; 65 Shashi Caan; 67 Theodore Prudon; 69 Getty Images/Time & Life Archive, Photographer Frank Scherschel; 70 US Patent No. 324, 825 25, August 1885, reproduced in S. Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, Oxford University Press, 1948; 71 Courtesy of the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Collection of M. de Clercq; 73 Shashi Caan, after James Marston Fitch, American Building, 1948; 74 Albrecht Dürer, St. Jerome in his Study, 1514; 75 Photography Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library; 77 Shashi Caan; 79 Shashi Caan, with data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index; 86 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 1751–1772; 88 Elsie de Wolfe, The House in Good Taste, 1913; 90–91 Catherine Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, American Woman’s Home, or Principles of Domestic Science, 1869; 92 Germain Boffrand, Oeuvre d’architecture… Paris, Pierre Patte, 1753; 93 Library of Congress; 95 top Ezra Stoller/ESTO; 95 bottom Shashi Caan; 96 top Pullman Company, as reproduced in S. Giedion, Mechanization Takes Command, Oxford University Press, 1948; 96 bottom Walter Dorwin Teague, 1949, Courtesy of Teague, Seattle; 97 left Scott Norsworthy; 97 right Shashi Caan; 98–99 Theodore Prudon; 100 left Charles Bell, The Anatomy of the Brain, 1802; 100 right Shashi Caan, as redrawn from the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America, January 2009; 101 Cover, American Phrenological Journal, Vol. X, No. 3, March, 1848, O. S. Fowler, ed.; 102 Caroli Linnaei, Systema naturae: Regnum animale, 1735; 103 J. C. Lavater, Von der Physiognomik, 1772; 104 Shashi Caan; 105 Galen R. Frysinger; 110–111, 115, 116–117, 121 Shashi Caan; 126 The New York Public Library Archives, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; 130–131 Rowena Reed Fund; 134 top Paul Jonusaitis; 134 center Foster + Partners; 134 bottom Shashi Caan; 138 Art & Architecture Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; 139 Shashi Caan, as redrawn with permission from Ethel Rompilla, Color for Interior Design, Harry N. Abrams, 2005; 140–141 Shashi Caan; 142 Courtesy of the Brent R. Harris Collection/©The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn and Dacs, London 2011; 144 Art & Architecture Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations; 146 top Kirill Pochivalov; 146 bottom Vladimir V. Lima, Phillippines; 148–149 Dunja Vrkljan; 151 top Getty Images, Photographer Mario Tama/©ARS, NY and DACS, London 2011; 151 bottom Getty Images, Photographer Timothy A. Clary/©ARS, NY and DACS, London 2011; 152–153 Getty Images/Hulton Archive, Photographer Frank Martin/©ARS, NY and DACS, London 2011; 155 Shashi Caan, adapted from original image courtesy of Flickr user “Oceandesetoiles;” 156–159, 161 top Shashi Caan; 161 center Theodore Prudon; 161 bottom Paul Goyette; 164 Shashi Caan; 172 Nicolas Lannuzel: www.flickr.com/photos/nlann; 173 Shashi Caan; 174 Constant Nieuwenhuys, New Babylon, Groep sectoren, 1959, Collection of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag/©DACS 2011; 175 Shimizu Corporation; 178–179 Tsui Design and Research AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The architectural truism of “it takes a village to build a building” very much applies to the actualization of this book. The simple yet poignant questions asked by my students inspired me to search for a deeper understanding and to investigate some of the fundamentals of both human needs and design criteria. At the end of the project, I would like to acknowledge all those who have contributed to its completion. These contributions include many discussions, advice, research, and reviews of ideas and various versions of the manuscript. Apart from those people with whom I have interacted, there remain others who have worked to help transform the manuscript into the physical reality of a book. I express my heartfelt thanks for your effort. As a teacher I must first and foremost thank all my students. I have learnt a great deal from them. It was their curiosity and persistent questioning of a need to understand design that forced me to seek comprehensive explanations for complex matters. The concepts in this book are born out of their quest for clarifications, and, in the process, it has enormously enriched my own comprehension. I am grateful to Philip Cooper, Editorial Director at Laurence King Publishing, who not only encouraged me to commit these ideas to paper, but also patiently guided me through the intriguing process of writing and publishing. Indeed, my thanks go to the entire Laurence King Publishing team, who helped with the myriad aspects involved in the publication of this book. Without their support and help, my ideas would still be the subject of verbal debate. To develop these initial ideas more fully, a broad and theoretical research effort was required. I am fortunate to have had assistance from a group of wonderful and smart researchers, who helped to expand the inquiry and give its content substance and depth. I am most appreciative of the support from Mikel Ciemny, Heidi Druckemiller, Olivia Klose, Karla de Vries, and Tara Rasheed for their perseverance in helping to locate the right sources, illustrations, and references. Their help was instrumental in providing a foundation and coherence for my thesis. The overall hypothesis and text would not be quite as reflective or cohesive without the profound help and support of Patrick Ciccone, whose dedicated research helped to give shape to the core argument. The final manuscript would not be complete without the attention to detail and dedicated effort of Annabel Barnes, who helped to ensure that all material came together flawlessly. My mentors, colleagues, and peers, Susan Szenasy, Ruth Lynford, Madeline Lester, Denise Guerin, Beth Harmon-Vaughn, Jennifer Busch, Danielle Galland, Cheryl Lim, Ian Pirie, John Rouse, Phillip Abbott, Brad Powell, and Drew Plunkett all provided comments and insights throughout the writing and at the various stages of the manuscript. They were instrumental in helping me to dissect, examine, and reassemble the core arguments and content. My faculty colleagues at Parsons the New School for Design—too many to mention individually—all contributed with expert opinions and insights which, directly and indirectly, led to my conviction of the necessity of this exploration. My more recent exposure to the world at large and the global community made me realize that many of the issues discussed here reach across countries and cultures. This experience was made possible through my involvement on the board of the International Federation of Interior Designers/Architects (IFI), both as a member and as its president. The various individual board members and member organizations worldwide have greatly contributed to the breadth and depth of my insights. The editorial expertise and discernment provided by both Kristi Cameron and Liz Faber was crucial for reaching lucidity and precision in a message that is near and dear to my heart. Finally, I must thank my role model and sage advisor, Theodore Prudon. Without his unconditional support and encouragement this project would not have been possible. His consistent probing for substance gives this book its depth and his intellect is equally embedded in these pages. In the end, Rethinking Design and Interiors: Human Beings in the Built Environment provides a series of connective ideas. They are shared with the intent to broaden the debate and to bring greater attention to the importance of designing environments for human occupation. Having articulated these thoughts, with enormous help and support from those mentioned here and many others involved in the process, I am optimistic that we are on the cusp of new opportunities for exploration, which will, by design, lead to better and more sensitively designed interventions. Preface: Rethinking Design Susan S. Szenasy Editor-in-Chief, Metropolis Magazine It is no secret to any observant person today that every profes- sion and every process is in crisis. Approaches that were inven- ted and then matured in the previous centuries feel hopelessly out of date. And all signs indicate that we are not yet prepared to meet the crisis. In many parts of the industrialized world the quick-fix mentality trumps the deliberate, systematic approach that could create long-term policies befitting a democracy. What brings this ineffectuality to crisis proportions is that we operate in a global economy characterized by the instant movement of capital while the people on the ground – with their local needs, wisdom, and material resources – are left to fend for themselves. To understand this new context, we must expand our thinking to include the overarching needs of our time: dramatic and catas- trophic environmental degradation worldwide, rapid and volu- minous global communication, and unprecedented and life- changing technological innovation. These developments call for a new way of thinking about our world at every scale, in every culture, in every geographic location. Like other endeavors, de- sign, that thoughtful human act which gives shape to all cultures, must be recast to embrace systems thinking. You hold in your hand a book that points the way for the design of interiors in our newly complex world. It offers a deep dive into the things that make us human, our most intimate surroun- dings – our interiors – being one of these things. It explores our deep-seated and evolving relationship with our rooms, be these in our homes or any other interior where we spend a majority of days and nights. It traces this intimate relationship from the cave, where the first humans escaped from danger, to the high- rise corporate office where we carry on complex, yet invisible, electronic transactions in ergonomically sophisticated spaces. While we graduated from the ancient cave to the modern office, we seem to have forgotten the very things that make us human: our basic need for shelter, for well-being, for social interaction. As you will learn here, each one of these topics, and many others subsidiary to them, have been and continued to be stu- died by social scientists through observation, documentation, and analysis. Now, this scientific approach must become the underpinning of design thinking. The art (beauty, emotion, intuition) of interiors needs a scientific foundation (observation, research, analysis). Even as the profession continues to develop its ever-higher standards for the environmental footprint of interiors – through its demand for non-toxic, healthy material – it has yet to dig deep into the research on behavior and feeling, comfort and experience. While those who design interiors can document the relative greenness of their designs, their intuition tells 6 Preface them that this is an incomplete approach to their work. Holistic design, or systems thinking as Buckminster Fuller used to call it, pays attention to all our senses – smell, sound, temperature, touch – as well as the natural and designed environments that support them. You are about to embark on a fascinating journey of how art and science can come together for the benefit of those who inhabit interior spaces, for the natural environment in which we have all evolved, and for the profession that creates the inner space. In the process you’ll reacquaint yourself with such basics of the human condition as trust, dignity, and satisfaction. September 2010 Preface 7 Introduction As working professionals, designers of interiors do not question enough what their discipline really is or wonder about how what they do is perceived by the public at large. They exercise the skills they have so carefully developed, solve the problems immediately at hand, and have the gratification of seeing satis- fied clients. But spend time with thoughtful young people who are studying design with an intent to shape meaningful environ- ments, as I did while serving as the chair of the interior design program at Parsons The New School for Design, in New York, and you will quickly find they are seeking a more comprehen- sive definition of that expertise: How, exactly, does it relate to the other design disciplines and what is unique about it? Why do we need design for the interior? As someone trained in architecture, industrial design, and inte- riors, I know all too well that, at their core, all design disciplines share certain skills. But I am also very aware of the fact that what they are concerned with is not necessarily interchangeable. Yes, architects deal with interior volumes when they design buildings, and they think about how the shape of those spaces will affect the occupant. And industrial designers think about the comfort and functional requirements of the individuals who will spend hours sitting in their chairs while at work or traveling, and the surrounds of these products. Designers specializing in interiors think about how people occupy and experience spaces, and how to arrange and use the objects that fill them in a way that enables us to recognize who we are as individuals, and how we relate to others, as well as creating the many other intangible qualities that make us successful through the success of our environment. This is not only limited to single rooms (of any scale) but also to the narrative of the experience created in the transition between interconnected volumes (with or without literal walls or ceilings). At the core of interiors is an understanding of abstract qualities of shaping this negative space or void. All these complex parts need to come together to form a cohesive whole. Shaping the spaces we inhabit is human nature. Since we first abandoned sleeping under the open sky for shelters with roofs and walls, we have been modifying our surroundings by adap- ting and shaping all the components intended to support and improve the quality of our lives. Interiors and design, therefore, are intimately connected to who we are as a species. Interiors most closely define human beings, our behavior and emotions, within our built world in a way no other discipline does. This answer did not satisfy my students; they needed one that more clearly and better defined the parameters of the discipline and thus the career they had chosen: interior design. After leaving my position as chair at Parsons to pursue the inter- national commissions my firm had acquired and to assume the presidency of the International Federation of Interior Architects/ 8 Introduction Designers (IFI), I began to realize that there was an even bigger issue at stake. Not only do we not understand the role of design for interiors as it exists today, but we are on the cusp of extraor- dinary global and societal changes that will profoundly impact requirements for how we live and thus the places where most of our lives are spent: inside, which will affect, for that matter, all design. We are fighting to survive on a planet whose ecosys- tems our very success as a species has thrown out of accord. As we struggle to accommodate our growing numbers in increa- singly dense cities and buildings, we are becoming ever more urban dwellers. In the not too distant future, we will inhabit structures so large and so complex that they constitute entire neighborhoods and communities. This will present us with new challenges for creating interior spaces. It will force us to remem- ber why we began to design in the first place: to improve the human condition and provide ourselves with a measure of phy- sical and psychological comfort. So facing all of those challenges, what will this discipline have to become? We are at a critical moment in the history of the world but also in the evolution of design disciplines. To meet the challenges we face, these disciplines need a better foundation upon which to build, which will require the development of a scientific under- standing of how the built environment affects us. Designing interiors will also mean embracing a much broader engage- ment with, and responsibility for, our societal and environmental actions and making certain this knowledge is embedded in both education and practice. This book endeavors to outline how today’s practice developed and why the discipline is perceived as it is. How it must change by gathering the data – phenomen- ological and sensorial – and must include a greater understanding of human behavior and how it can be influenced through the language of design. Once we can better quantify and qualify the human experience of objects and spaces, we can align this new design knowledge with our educational and design pro- cesses. This new knowledge will finally foster a greater appre- ciation for, and connection between, the built environment and its occupants. It will engender and promote well-being and facilitate human advancement. The need for this design research is not limited to any particular design discipline but will form part of a common language, and will allow for ever more collaborative practice even while specific disciplines grow more specialized. But of all the design discip- lines, interiors have an important role to play in leading the way toward developing the core body of knowledge that will inform all design practice: the interior fulfills, and always has fulfilled, our most basic need for shelter. While the future of humanity is tied to its past, the history of this past is expressed not in stylistic periods but in how we have evolved as human beings. This comes from within us. And thus design has to come from within to envision and craft a sensitively responsive and respon- sible future built world. Shashi Caan September 2010 Introduction 9